In recent decades many Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals have considered
speaking in tongues to be the “most characteristic feature” of the Pentecostal
movement.[1]
However, early Pentecostals generally understood tongues speech to be secondary
to and arising out of what could be characterized as a “millenarian” belief
system.[2]
My purpose in this article is to suggest that this belief system was not only
representative of North American Pentecostalism, but was also the initial
message of Thomas Ball Barratt (1862-1940), founder of Pentecostalism in Norway
and the instrument in spreading the Pentecostal revival to other countries
within Western Europe.

How did the concept of missionary tongues enter American Pentecostalism?

It is common knowledge among Pentecostal scholars that Charles F. Parham, who
gave notoriety to the initial-evidence Spirit baptism teaching in the USA,
preached a millenarian message. Parham was influenced by Holiness advocate Frank
W. Sandford, who again was indebted to other millenarians who believed that
Christ’s imminent return would be preceded by a world-wide revival. Inspired by
Sandford, Parham believed that the gift of speaking in tongues (not understood
as glossolalia but instead as xenolalia) would function as a
tremendous evangelistic tool, as it implied speaking existing human languages.
One American teenager, Jenny Glassey, “upon whom the Holy Spirit purportedly had
bestowed a dozen African dialects and several other languages”,[3]
left the U.S. in December 1895 with the intention of going to Sierra Leone as a
missionary. Sandford printed parts of her testimony in his Tongues of Fire
magazine, and Parham did likewise in his own Apostolic Faith periodical
in 1899, informing his readership that she could “read and write, translate and
sing the language while out of the trance or in a normal condition, and can
until now.”[4]

The main difference between Sandford and Parham was the former’s belief that the
gift of tongues was just one among several possible Spirit manifestations
following the end-time Church, while Parham was convinced that tongues speech
was the very key to spreading the Gospel effectively to all corners of the
world, which, in turn, would usher in the return of Christ. Besides, according
to Parham, speaking in tongues was the very criteria or evidence for knowing
whether one had received the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

Parham seems to have maintained his understanding of tongues as real languages,
intended for missionary usage, until his death. It was only natural, then, that
he passed on this understanding to his followers. Agnes N. Ozman, the first of
Parham’s followers who received the gift of tongues on January 1, 1901, asked
him to pray for her with the laying on of hands “as she hoped to go to foreign
fields”. She concluded that her supernaturally received language was “the
Chinese language”, without identifying the particular dialect (such as Cantonese
or Mandarin)[5]. Two days later, Parham
himself claimed having received “the Sweedish [sic!] tongue, which later
changed to other languages”.[6]
Some of Parham’s students were convinced that under the Holy Spirit’s
inspiration they could even write in foreign languages they had never
learned.

William J. Seymour, who had been taught by Parham for five weeks before he took
the Pentecostal message to Los Angeles in February 1906, also initially believed
in the concept of missionary tongues. Parham had claimed that those who were
Spirit baptized “would achieve recognition as members of Christ’s bride upon the
occasion of the Second Coming. This elite band of Christians consisted of those
to be snatched away in the rapture and spared the awful trials of the seven-year
tribulation period. Upon returning with Christ during the second stage of his
appearing, they would serve important positions in the administration of the
millennial government.”[7]

Seymour had been introduced to Parham via Mrs. Lucy F. Farrow, who was pastoring
an African American Holiness church in the city of Houston. She had spoken in
tongues and gave full support to Parham’s Pentecostal message. One month after
Seymour’s arrival in Los Angeles, he was joined by her and Joseph A. Warren,
both part of Parham’s ministry to African Americans in Houston.

Seymour had left Houston in February to pastor a Holiness church at 1604 East
Ninth Street, founded by Julia W. Hutchins. After about a week’s preaching,
however, Seymour was ejected from the church and started independent prayer
meetings, first in the home of Edward S. and Mattie Lee, who according to
Pentecostal historian Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. lived “near the corner of Union and
West First Street (now Beverley Blvd.)”, and then in the home of Richard and
Ruth Asberry on 214 (now 216) N. Bonnie Brae Street. “The core group […]
comprised about fifteen African Americans, including five children.”[8]
The crowd grew quickly. Both Anders Gustaf Johansson, a Swedish immigrant who
used the American name Andrew G. Johnson, and at least two fellow countrymen
found their way to prayer meetings at the Bonnie Brae house and elsewhere.
When the meetings were moved to 312 Azusa Street in April, it did not
take long before attendance exploded.

Edward Lee, Seymour’s host, was the first to experience Spirit baptism in Los
Angeles. Several African Americans had a similar experience at the Bonnie Brae
prayer meetings, while the first one to receive a specific Spirit encounter in
the Azusa Street building after Seymour took over the building was a “Latino day
worker, reportedly struck by the power of the Holy Spirit while preparing the
Apostolic Faith Mission for the Saturday service.” This day worker, most
probably a Mexican, was “clearing the mission of debris a day before the mission
opened.”[9]

The Azusa Street meetings soon attracted “various racial and ethnic groups:
blacks, whites, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans.”[10]
Later researchers have sometimes claimed that Barratt attended the meetings, but
that is simply not the case. During a visit to the U.S. in 1905-6 to raise funds
for his City Mission in Christiania (Oslo), he heard about the Azusa Street
revival. He corresponded with Ida May Throop, Clara Lum, Benjamin H. Irwin and
Glenn Cook, staff workers at the Azusa Street mission, who tried to instruct him
regarding how to receive Spirit baptism.[11]
On October 11, he even received a letter from Seymour.[12]

The history of Barratt and his role in the origins of the Pentecostal movement
in Norway is fairly well known among Pentecostal scholars. As already hinted at
in the introduction, the purpose of this article is not only to challenge a
previous claim that Norwegian Pentecostalism in its initial stage did not
reflect the missionary tongues concept, but also to suggest serious doubts about
the identification of early Pentecostalism as a millenarian movement to be an
original thesis with Robert Mapes Anderson, when he published his first edition
of Vision of the Disinherited in 1979.[13]
This thesis was set forth as early as 1928, in a lengthy, often overlooked
footnote in Norwegian. The book, Dommedagsventing (Waiting for judgment
day) with subtitle Millennismen og dens innslag i norsk kristenliv
(Millenarianism and its impact on Norwegian church life) by author Thorstein
Gunnarson, pertains only tangentially to Pentecostalism. According to Gunnarson,
Barratt and his Pentecostal associates, both in Europe and in the U.S, were
basically preaching an eschatological message about the imminent return of
Christ. “The imminent Millennium and its even more imminent rapture will be
preceded by a new Pentecost of the Spirit.” Then the author claims to be citing
Barratt, although it is uncertain whether he paraphrases or is quoting a
supposed written Barratt source from the latter’s earliest Pentecostal phase
which I have been unable to locate: “What now happens – Barratt wrote – is just
the beginning. The work [of God, i.e., The Pentecostal revival] will penetrate
all camps and prepare the nations for the return of Christ.” He then continued
with his own words – “Barratt’s humble City Mission would actually become sort
of a Mission towards Europe [as a whole], which, in turn, is a Mission towards
the Gentiles: a missions preaching encompassing all peoples which would attack
the masses of heathendom with prophetical[ly inspired] fervor of tongues-speech
and understood xenolalia [by the audience]– that made unnecessary the
complicated language studies. During the initial and experimental phase, there
were various men and women who according to this kind of faith ran to the ends
of the earth with their optimistic gospel.”[14]
Quoting Gunnarson’s footnote in a previous Norwegian article, I added the
following words: “Unfortunately Gunnarson does not reveal which Barratt sources
he has consulted, and there is an uncertainty as to whether he quotes Barratt
literally or paraphrases.”[15]

How did the concept of missionary tongues enter Norwegian Pentecostalism?

How did Gunnarson arrive at the conclusion that Pentecostalism was a millenarian
movement? I find it hard to believe that he was mistaken, as what he claimed
constituted the Pentecostal message corresponds perfectly with the
eschatological orientation within American Pentecostalism during its initial
phase. In fact, the understanding of tongues as an eschatological sign and as a
legitimization of the missionaries’ end-time message regarding the imminent
return of Christ only lasted through 1908-9[16]
(as several returned to their home country “in disappointment and failure”[17]),
although Parham never abdicated from this doctrine.[18]
From about 1909, tongues were redefined as a ‘heavenly language’ (now understood
as glossolalia), although God, exceptionally, might give somebody a human
language they had never learned naturally (xenolalia), as was the case with the
120 believers on the Day of Pentecost. This redefinition of the purpose of
tongues speech was not published from the rooftops, though, and gradually people
seemed to forget that the concept of missionary tongues was not “an aberration
entertained only by a few extremists”, but “rather, a fundamental and nearly
universal notion during the first few years of the movement.”[19]
For this reason, when Anderson in his Vision of the Disinherited claimed
that not tongues, but millenarianism, was Pentecostalism’s most significant
characteristic during its earliest phase, his thesis was considered
groundbreaking. How could Gunnarson, accidentally so to speak, have hit the nail
on the head in 1928 with an identical thesis if it were not for the fact that he
was right? For both Barratt and the American Pentecostalists, to quote Anderson,
“speaking in tongues and healing were subordinate elements in what was first and
foremost a millenarian movement.”[20]

Gunnarson was a trained theologian and minister within the Lutheran state church
of Norway, but although his purpose was to inform, he had no intention of
writing an academic treatise. For that reason, he did not defend his thesis with
literary references. As already mentioned, his book dealt with millenarianism in
a general sense, and Pentecostalism was only briefly referred to in the
beforementioned footnote. Consequently, the book, which remains out of print,
has hardly been known among Norwegian Pentecostals. Nils Bloch-Hoell, however,
in his 1956 dissertation on Norwegian Pentecostalism, mentions the book and
quite arrogantly dismisses the validity of the author’s claim. Bloch-Hoell
agrees with Gunnarson that eschatology has always been an important doctrine
within Pentecostalism, but not that it takes center stage in Pentecostalism’s
belief system. In 1964, a modification of Bloch-Hoell’s dissertation was
published in English, and the author’s criticism of Gunnarson was maintained.
Bill Faupel, in his The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of
Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought (1996), who wrote: “in
agreement with Robert Mapes Anderson […] [with focus] on the central importance
of eschatology for understanding American Pentecostalism,”[21]
complements Anderson’s thesis stating that the “millenarian belief system
[within American Pentecostalism] resulted from a paradigm-shift which took place
within nineteenth-century Perfectionism.”[22]

Neither Anderson nor Faupel credits Gunnarson as the originator of their thesis.
It does not require much creativity to have a competent linguist translate
Gunnarson’s footnote into English and thereafter make the thesis one’s own. To
begin with, there is nothing wrong doing so, because both Anderson and Faupel
provide invaluable insights into American Pentecostalism which is without a
doubt a product of their own original research. But especially considering the
academic breakthrough of Anderson’s thesis, Gunnarson should have been
duly credited. Faupel did credit him, not in his 1996 publication,
however, but in his lengthier Ph.D. dissertation from 1989, stating that
Gunnarson’s thesis “available only in [the Norwegian language] remained unknown
to the English-speaking world until 1964 when The Pentecostal Movement,
written by a fellow Norwegian, was translated. The author, Nils Bloch-Hoell,
briefly considered and then rejected Gunnerson’s [sic!] contention: ‘This
is not correct. Eschatology is certainly a necessary part of the Pentecostal
message. It is a consequence of the Biblicism of the Movement, and it is also in
accordance with the fancy for the extraordinary and perturbing. Apart from this,
eschatology in itself does not appear to have assumed any unusual importance.’”[23]
Bloch-Hoell also made it easy for the two Americans locating Gunnarson’s
Norwegian thesis, footnoting it after having stated to be in disagreement with
“Th. Gunnarson when he claims that the Pentecostal preaching is first of all
eschatological.”[24]

It is not surprising that Bloch-Hoell rejected Gunnarson’s claim. After all,
Gunnarson did not reveal any literary sources – he just stated that “Barratt
writes”. And how could Bloch-Hoell have known about the subtle redefinition of
the purpose of tongues-speech as long as trained American academicians seem to
have depended on Gunnarson for the formulation of their own thesis?[25]
And Faupel was even born within Pentecostalism in the sense that his parents
were participants in the Latter Rain movement.[26]

Even though I have been unable to track down explicit statements by Barratt in
his publications that he initially subscribed to the missionary tongues concept,
I have no reason to doubt the validity of Gunnarson’s claim. Maybe there are
still readable sources at the National Library in Oslo which may prove Gunnarson
true, but I have not found them. For lack of substantial evidences, I will
instead argue in favor of Gunnarson’s thesis, partly leaning on Barratt’s
implicit statements and partly on available historical information from his
encounter with American Pentecostalism until he arrived in Norway in December
1906.

I have already touched on the fact that Parham’s eschatological message was
passed on to his followers. Admittedly, Robeck is hesitant about whether Seymour
remained loyal to the doctrine of missionary tongues much longer than 1907:
“Initially Pastor Seymour had agreed with Parham’s position that tongues were
actual human languages, given for missionary use. But by mid-1907 he seemed to
distance himself from Parham on the issue.”[27]
But we must remember that Barratt’s exposure to Pentecostalism occurred in 1906.
And we do not yet know whether Gunnarson referred to a Barratt source written at
approximately the same time. Besides, it was not common knowledge that Seymour
was undergoing a theological shift.

Barratt had left for the U.S. in September 1905[28]
with the purpose of raising funds for his City Mission in Christiania (Oslo).
The fundraising effort proved to be a failure, though, and while finding lodging
at A.B. Simpson’s Alliance House at 250 W. Forty-fourth Street in New York City,
he was given a copy of the first issue of Seymour’s Apostolic Faith
magazine from Azusa Street in Los Angeles. This particular issue was published
in September 1906, and Barratt initiated his correspondence with Azusa Street
staff workers that very same month. It must be remembered that at this time
everybody among the Pentecostals subscribed to the eschatological message of
Christ’s imminent return and to tongues-speech as missionary tongues, whose
purpose was to give legitimacy to their eschatological message. Barratt received
six letters from Throop, Cook, Lum, and Irwin, respectively, plus the one from
Seymour already referred to.[29]
And when Barratt during a service in Maude William’s mission at 250 W. 14th
Street[30]
in New York City November 15, was prayed for by her and later that evening by
Lucy Leatherman and an unknown Norwegian man, he not only spoke in tongues, but
felt certain he could distinguish between seven or eight different languages.[31]
He most certainly must have referred to recognizable human languages, because
the Pentecostal identification of tongues as primarily a ‘heavenly language’ was
not known until a few years later.

Already in August 1906, however, Barratt had met with Anders Gustaf Johansson
(Andrew G. Johnson), who had not only received ‘Spirit baptism’ in Los Angeles,
but like Barratt would do in November, was convinced that he under inspiration
had spoken several human languages. They both found lodging at the Alliance
House on W. Forty-fourth Street, and Barratt’s claim that he at the time knew
nothing about Azusa Street and that Johansson did not share a word about his
personal experiences there, seems anything but probable, especially since
Johansson claimed the opposite.[32]
As far as I can determine, Barratt was probably the one who lied.

The Azusa Street believers soon spread the Pentecostal message, not only to
surrounding towns, but also all across the nation. Alfred Goodrich and Lillian
Garr were the first oversees missionaries who went out from Azusa Street in July
1906, leaving for India in January 1907.[33]
They were soon followed by others. Robeck believes that Lucy Leatherman
functioned as a coordinator of a “missionary sending strategy” to Africa. Around
December 1,[34]
ten “first-time [Pentecostal] missionaries” (and three small children) arrived
in New York City. Even though they had departed from Azusa Street “at different
times, between August and November”, their arrival in New York City seemed
fairly coordinated, and they were treated “as a single group”. According to
Robeck, they stayed at the Alliance House (at least some of them, and the others
close to it) where Barratt was lodging. And “they all worshipped together at the
Union Holiness Mission at 351 West Fortieth Street, a small African American
congregation led by Elder Sturdevant.”[35]

Who were these missionaries? The best well known of them, naturally, was Lucy
Farrow, the African American Holiness pastor in Houston who had introduced
Seymour to Parham and who was later invited to Los Angeles to assist Seymour at
the Bonnie Brae prayer meetings, and subsequently at the Azusa Street meetings.
It is also interesting to note that Julia Hutchins (with her husband Willis),
the founder of the African American Holiness assembly on 1604 Ninth Street in
Los Angeles, where Seymour had been invited as a pastor because she felt a
missionary call to Liberia, was among the ten missionaries now heading for
Africa. Although she had felt the obligation to “lock the door” on Seymour after
he had started to preach about tongues speech as the initial evidence of one’s
having received ‘Spirit baptism’, she had obviously been won over to the
Pentecostal side. Notable among the missionaries were also Samuel and Ardella
Mead, former Methodist missionaries to Angola for some twenty years. According
to Robeck, they were “often mentioned as helping to identify [alleged human]
languages spoken [in tongues] at the [Azusa Street] mission – though they were
not alone in doing so.”[36]
And George Batman eagerly testified that “God had given him six languages and
instructed him to go to Monrovia [capital of Liberia].”[37]
Barratt not only had the opportunity of eighteen days of fellowship with some of
them in New York City, at least from November 21 until they set sail for
England on December 8, en route for Africa, but he was actually a fellow
passenger on RMS Campania. This implies twenty-five days of fellowship and
mutual interaction with the Azusa Street missionaries from they arrived in New
York City until the British ocean liner arrived in Liverpool on December 15.[38]

It would indeed seem strange if Barratt were capable of distinguishing between
the Pentecostal experience (speaking in tongues) and the Pentecostal end-time
message since those things went hand in hand. The Azusa Street missionaries were
confident that God had endowed them with the gift of tongues so that they could
preach to the natives in Liberia[39]
and Angola[40],
respectively, and Barratt expressed no reservations when referring to his
encounter with them.[41]
Neither did he criticize the concept of missionary tongues in his forthcoming
books. In fact, he remained just as silent about this issue as the leaders of
American Pentecostalism were after the purpose of tongues-speech around 1909 was
redefined from being a human language meant for missionary preaching to being
primarily a celestial one.[42]

Considering Barratt’s intense exposure to zealous missionary tongues evangelists
where he received the experience without expressing reservations towards the
theology which lay behind it, combined with the fact that Gunnarson gave an
exact representation of what constituted the original Pentecostal end-time
message, even claiming to be quoting a written Barratt source at a time (1928)
when almost everybody, both insiders and outsiders within the United States,
seemed to have forgotten what the message was all about, I believe there is a
sufficient basis for considering Gunnarson a reliable source. Posterity has
proven him correct as far as his assessment of what constituted the original
Pentecostal message is concerned. Nothing seems to suggest that he possessed
firsthand insights into American Pentecostalism per se, which again suggests
that his only source was Barratt, which, in turn, strengthens the validity of
Gunnarson’s claim that Barratt also, when he wrote what Gunnarson leaned on,
subscribed to the same eschatological foundation as his American mentors in that
respect had done. I also believe this article has succeeded in proving, in
agreement with Faupel’s reference to Gunnarson’s book in his own Ph.D.
dissertation from 1989, that Gunnarson is the originator of the millenarian
thesis which both Anderson and Faupel built on and expanded. For that he should
be duly credited.

[2]
David William Faupel, The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of
Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought (Sheffield:
Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 18. “Millenarianism” has been defined,
not only as belief in “the existing world to be wicked and beyond
redemption by any human effort” but also as belief in “the imminent
destruction of this world and the creation of a new one.” Robert Mapes
Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited. The Making of American
Pentecostalism (Peabody, Massachussetts: Hendrickson Publishers,
1992), 229-30.

[11]David D. Bundy,
“Spiritual Advice to a Seeker: Letters to T.B. Barratt from Azusa
Street, 1906.” Pneuma 14 (1992): 62-75. Tragically, Barratt’s
unpublished materials have been stored at the National Library in Oslo
where there is little if any understanding at all regarding the
importance of preserving these materials for research purposes.
Barratt’s invaluable correspondence is becoming more difficult to read
from one year to another due to the acid paper on which his handwritings
appear.

[13]On the back side of
the cover of Anderson’s book (reprint 1992) Gary B. McGee writes “Since
the first publication of Anderson’s Vision of the Disinherited,
students of Pentecostalism have been challenged by his thesis on the
origins of the movement.”

[16]McGee claims (p. 105)
that “the hope of tongues as a gift of language for preaching had begun
to diminish by 1908”. Citing Darrin Rodgers, Northern Harvest:
Pentecostalism in North Dakota (Bismarck, North Dakota: North Dakota
District Council of the Assemblies of God, 2003), McGee further states
on the same page that “in a related development and in contrast to the
notion that tongues always represented unlearned human languages, some
began to identify tongues as the languages of angels (1 Cor 13:1), a
phenomenon that also highlighted adoration. This surfaced as early as
February 1904 in Audubon, Minnesota, where A.O. Morken [unrelated to the
circle surrounding Parham and also the Azusa Street revival] described
the tongues heard in revival meetings there as ‘Angel Language’. Morken
was a Norwegian immigrant to America, and his testimony was published in
Folke Vennen, a widely-circulated Norwegian language evangelical
periodical published in Chicago. Morken’s testimony reveals a weakness
in my argument: if Morken viewed tongues as angelic languages, then it
is conceivable that Barratt, his co-linguist, would have had either been
aware of these claims or could have developed a similar theology.
However, any link between Barratt and Morken is speculative. Three years
later, Alfred Garr concluded that unknown tongues could be either
recognizable languages or those of angels.” Also Goff, who with Anderson
and Faupel subscribes to the millenarian thesis (p. 15), states that “by
1909 many Pentecostals were becoming skeptical of missionary tongues, at
least as a widespread phenomenon. Tongues – now primarily understood as
glossolalia – served as proof of ones’s reception of Holy Spirit baptism
and, with the assistance of a divinely inspired interpreter, carried a
message of hope and assurance to individual congregations” (Goff,
ibid., 16).

[18]Goff, ibid.,
154: “Parham, however, clung tenaciously to the vision of world conquest
via mission tongues. He insisted that all authentic tongue speech was
xenoglossic and blamed the counterfeit experiment of the newer
Pentecostals for any failures in the mission field. Despite Parham’s
claim that the phenomenon worked well for missionaries he had sponsored,
most Pentecostals abandoned the original interpretation in favor of a
moderate position which defined ‘heavenly languages’ (i.e., glossolalia)
as the norm and missionary tongues (i.e., xenoglossa) as the
extraordinaire.”

[25]“Once the belief in a
Second Coming ceased to be an immediate individual expectation, it could
no longer hold the central place in Pentecostal thought. Thus, speaking
in tongues, which retained its immediacy, moved to the center of
Pentecostal ideology.”
(Anderson, ibid., 96.)

[31]
Barratt, Erindringer, 123. Williams was possibly
Canadian, having recently received her ‘Spirit baptism’ in Canada.
(Barratt, When the fire fell, 128.)

[32]Jan-Åke
Alvarsson, “Pingstväckelsens etablering i Sverige. Från Azusa Street
till Skövde på sju månader” in Claes Waern, ed., Pingströrelsen:
Händelser och utveckling under 1900-talet (Stockholm, Sweden: Libris
förlag, 2007), 18. Johansson arrived in
Sweden on November 16 and started to share his Pentecostal testimony,
i.e., more than a month prior to Barratt’s return to Norway in December.
It is also interesting to note that while Barratt’s first article about
the Azusa Street revival appeared in a Norwegian magazine (Byposten)
on October 6, the first article in Swedish (by A. Linn) appeared in
Närkesbladet on September 18.

[33]Robeck, ibid.,
250. However, Mary Johnson “of the Swedish Free Mission in Moorhead,
Minnesota”, who apparently had had no contact neither with Charles
Parham nor the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles, although she had
spoken in tongues, arrived in Durban, South Africa in January 1905 and
seems to have been the “first Euroamerican ‘Pentecostal’ missionary of
the twentieth century.” (McGee, ibid., 91-2; Rodgers, 13-14)

[34]In his diary from
November 25, which was a Sunday, Barratt wrote that he met with Samuel
and Ardella Mead the previous Wednesday, which happened to be on the 21st.
He had “been looking out for them some time, having through them entered
into a clear understanding of the [Azusa] revival at Los Angeles.” Barratt, When the Fire Fell, 135-6; Barratt, Erindringer,
127.

[35]Robeck, ibid.,
267. Anderson (p. 130) claims that “the mission leaders [on 250 W. 14th
Street], however, apparently rejected the new movement, since from then
on the Pentecostal believers began attending the Union Holiness Mission
at 351 West 40th Street.” Cf. also Barratt, Erindringer,
127-128.

[38]I have a copy of the
entire passenger list and may therefore confirm the validity of Robeck’s
claim as far as the identity of the Azusa Street missionaries: Lucy
Farrow and her niece Leila McKinney, Julia and Willis Hutchins, Samuel
and Ardella Mead, Robert and Myrtle K. Shideler, and George and Daisy
Batman (with their three children). Robeck further writes on p. 267-8
that the group “were joined by three new African American converts
headed for Liberia. Mr. F.M. Cook was baptized in the Spirit when Lucy
Farrow and George Batman laid hands on him and prayed. He was
accompanied by his wife (unnamed) and a woman identified only as Mrs.
Lee.” I can also, based on the passenger’s list, confirm the validity of
these persons’ presence on the ship. And, obviously, Barratt is also
included among the passengers. They all traveled on 3rd.
class. On December 16, Barratt was on board another ship, this time from
Hull to Norway and arrived in Christiania on the 18. His first meeting
in Norway was on December 19. (Barratt, Erindringer, 131, 134;
Barratt, When the Fire Fell, 139.)

[39]“The story of the
Batmans, the Cooks, and Mrs. Lee,” Robeck writes on p. 269, “was a
tragic one. Within weeks of their arrival, the entire Batman family,
Mrs. Cook, and Mrs. Lee all contracted either malaria or black water
fever and died. The Apostolic Faith [Los Angeles, CA] never published an
account of their deaths, though they did acknowledge that some folks had
been “martyred”. Perhaps it was not necessary to publish a full
announcement. The Pentecostal movement – from Los Angeles to Portland to
Sunderland, England – quickly became aware of the tragedy, no doubt by
word of mouth.” Both Lucy Farrow and Julia Hutchins returned to the
United States within less than a year. After her return to America, Lucy
Farrow claimed that “on two occasions” in Liberia, “the Lord had given
her ‘the gift of the Kru language’ and permitted her ‘to preach two
sermons to the people in their own tongue’. She bore witness to the fact
that the ‘heathen’ in Liberia had been baptized in the Spirit when they
‘spoke in English and some in other tongues’” (Robeck, ibid.,
269). Robeck also writes that “the people in Los Angeles as well as
Charles Parham believed that her tongue had been a genuine language” (p.
268).

[40]After their arrival
in Liverpool, the Meads and the Shidelers “boarded a ship bound for
Angola. The Meads returned to the United States within a year,
apparently without any fruit for their efforts. We have no further
information on the Shidelers after their arrival in Benguela, Angola.”
(Robeck, ibid., 274).

[42]As early as 1908,
however, Barratt “hinted […] at the possibility that some speaking in
tongues might be unintelligible”. (“The Truth about the Pentecostal
Revival.” Pamphlet (London, 1908), 10f., 34 as cited in Anderson,
ibid., 16.) This early date corresponds with the time around the
Sunderland Conference in England in June that same year, where Alexander
A. Boddy had invited Pentecostal leaders to discuss among other things
the “failures of certain Apostolic Faith missionaries who had gone to
Liberia, the Congo, and Japan” (Robeck, ibid., 247).